My Sister's Keeper

There is something about My Sister's Keeper that tugged at the string of the heart. The string of my heart, at least. The story of a family going through challenges, with one daughter who is very sick, one son creating problems to gain attention and in the midst of the chaos, one daughter decides to sue the parents for the rights of her own body.

Anna Fitzgerald is seeking medical emancipation from the court so that she doesn't have to donate one kidney to her sister who's dying from leukemia. One look, you would've thought that Anna is being selfish, spoilt even, for suing her parents. But pages after pages, we're forced to reconsider, to rethink, to put ourselves in Anna's shoes.

Anna is born to the world for one reason and one reason only. To save her sister from dying. She is what you called a designer baby, whose genetics has been decided by her parents, Sara and Brian, so that she can be a perfect donor match for her sister, Kate. Every time Kate goes for a surgery, Anna will have to go, too. Either her blood or bone marrow will be withdrawn from her to cure Kate.

At 13, though, Anna decided that enough is enough. She seeks the helps of Campbell Alexander, a successful lawyer to litigate her parents for medical emancipation. But everything is not what it seems. On the surface, at least. Anna's motivation to sue her parents remains a mystery until at the very end of the book. Which will shocked you.

One thing that drawn me to the story is the mystery of Campbell Alexander. He takes his dog, aptly named Judge, everywhere he goes. Even to the court. When asked, Campbell will say that Judge is a service dog, to which everyone else will reply “But you're not blind”. Campbell gives so many creative answers. Either he has a steel lung (Judge will keep him away from anything magnetic), or he has SARS (Judge will tally the number of people he infected), or he is color-blind (Judge will tell him when it is safe to cross the road). I laughed at every answers.

My Sister's Keeper is a story with depth and emotion. There's the drama, the conflict, the light moment, the humor and of course, the love story. I found myself siding with Anna halfway through the book. I root for her, and hope that she will keep her kidney.

But then, comes the ending. A heart-wrenching one. One that got me crying. Well... if it could make me shed my tears, it is definitely a bloody good book.